O'Malley dismisses GOP as a 'party of exclusion'

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley said on Sunday the Republican presidential ticket will be sending "not-so-subtly coded messages" to white voters as the campaign continues.

"When you have a party that says coded things, that makes totally false ads up, falsely saying the president is trying to undo welfare reform, I think you're going to see a lot of heavily and not-so-subtly coded messages from the Romney-Ryan campaign," O'Malley said on CNN's "State of the Union" when asked if presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney was trying to appeal to white voters.

O'Malley, the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association who's emerged as a top surrogate for President Barack Obama and is considered a potential Democratic candidate for president in 2016, said the Republicans have pinned themselves "in a demographic corner" and become a "party of exclusion."

"What people are going to see very clearly, simply in the pictures that come in to their living rooms of these two conventions, is a party of exclusion, and a party of inclusion," O'Malley said on CNN's "State of the Union." "The Republicans have painted themselves into a demographic corner, if you will. You hear people, like even Jeb Bush, saying that they have to change for the long-term because this view of white, Anglo-Saxon America, 'I'm a true American, no one questions where I was born' sort of thing is very offputting to us who believe that our diversity is our strength."

"I think the birther comment, when you combine it with Mitt Romney's other comments, the comments he made abroad, about the president not truly appreciating, when he was in England, the Anglo-Saxon perspective on the world, when you put it together with some of his anti-immigrant policies and the things that he has said, I think what it reveals is a sort of perspective on America that would take us back to the days of 'Ozzie and Harriet' rather than recognizing that we in fact a strong people because we are a diverse people," O'Malley said.

While O'Malley attributed comments about the "Anglo-Saxon" perspective to Romney, the quote actually came from an anonymous Romney advisor, and the Romney campaign said it didn't reflect the candidate's views.